where are the WMD?

Hi Mr. P,Have you seen this NY Times article on chemical weapons (requires a free subscription)? It seems to be the latest in the series. Although there are a number of oddities in the article (which seem like unsourced journalistic speculations - as usual), there's one bit that I find unusual given all the previous breathless-journalist-hyped "finds": the military is playing this one waaay closer to the vest.Obviously there are any number of reasons why this particular incident might be treated differently than previous ones. I can think of three off the top of my head, and I'm sure there are others:1. The military has been terribly embarassed over premature announcements in the past, and is keeping this one more controlled until they figure out exactly what they've got. If it's nothing, this prevents having to publish yet another retraction.2. This really IS the "big one", and the military wants to follow up and find all the goodies before going public.3. This is the first step in a disinformation campaign, where the US government will "plant" evidence to "prove" Hussein had all those bad things prior to the war, providing justification for the invasion. I've actually heard this proposed by a number of otherwise rational people.Any thoughts?

Ya know, you pose an extraordinarily interesting question: what form WILL the new Iraq take? Nothing resembling a Western democracy has ever been tried on the Arabian penninsula, as far as I know. The only really "successful" Arab democracies have been in places that had loooong histories of Western occupation/colonization before achieving independence - and those were mostly religiously homogenous (think Egypt and Tunisia - and the latter is iffy considering Bourguiba was "president for life" until deposed by Abidine ben Ali). Everything else is either a kingdom, emirate or sheikdom. The only example of a Western-style democracy attempted in a multi-ethnic/multi-religous Arab state that I can think of is Lebanon - which was an utter disaster. Turkey isn't Arab, and without the incredibly charismatic Attaturk, might not have developed into a modern state even so.Oddly enough, the folks that have the best track record of institution building, development of a thriving market economy from scratch, and stability are the one group that is the least likely to be permitted to have much say in the new government: the Kurds of northern Iraq. What those folks have managed to accomplish in only ten years pretty much on their own is nothing short of amazing. It's almost a shame that they'll never be permitted to form their own state - 50,000 Turkish troops poised on the border ready to invade at the first sign will pretty much put paid to any ideas of nationhood. Of course, they're not really democratic either - more like warlords. And whether the two main groups can continue to cooperate in the absence of the one unifying objective - survival in the face of Saddam Hussein - is problematic.If left to their own devices, I'd be willing to bet the Iraqis would develop something resembling a Shia-based sheikdom or kingdom, like the Wahabbi in Saudi Arabia. Of course, about two weeks later the place would degenerate into a multi-lateral civil war. The US has historically been rotten at long-term nation building. Arguably its few successes (i.e., Japan) relied more on local capability and talent than US "leadership". It should be a very interesting next couple of years.

My former business partner was one of the most brilliant biologists (or people in general) it's ever been my pleasure to deal with - but he couldn't construct a grammatical sentence to save his life. I spent an inordinate amount of time re-writing the reports we submitted to our contractees and counterparts...